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Wrongful   /rˈɔŋfəl/   Listen
Wrongful

adjective
1.
Having no legally established claim.  Synonym: unlawful.
2.
Unlawfully violating the rights of others.  "A wrongful diversion of trust income"
3.
Not just or fair.  "A wrongful charge"



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"Wrongful" Quotes from Famous Books



... longer held to have issued a proclamation without due grounds in usage or the law of nations. It became by the modification no more a proceeding about which we could warrantably go to war. For instance, the President changed the words "wrongful" into "hurtful." According to Webster, wrongful means unjust, injurious, dishonest; while hurtful implies that the course will cause injury. The original has vanished in that odd but certain way in which state documents disappear when casting odium on ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... chapt. 12 of The Dabistn by Shaw and Troyer, Paris and London, 1843. By the learned studies of Dr. Pertsch the authorship of this work of the religious eclecticism of Akbar's reign, has been taken from the wrongful claimant and definitively assigned to the legitimate owner, Mobed Shah. (See Z. d. M. G. xvi. 224.) It is regretable that the index of the translation is worthless ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the momentous responsibility of having assisted to cut his brother loose from the protection to which his father had confided him. Mr. Audley's warning that he was inclined to be weak where Edgar was concerned, came before him. Yet the life of luxury and unfulfilled duties was in his eyes such a wrongful course, that he felt justified in having put an end to it; and his heart warmed with hope and exultation as he recollected how Etty's success had been owing to his brother's aid, and felt himself putting ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ceremony did each knight take upon him the vows of true knighthood: to obey the King; to show mercy to all who asked it; to defend the weak; and for no worldly gain to fight in a wrongful cause: and all the knights rejoiced together, doing honour to Arthur and to his Queen. Then they rode forth to right the wrong and help the oppressed, and by their aid the King held his realm in peace, doing ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... is the changed mental attitude of many young people towards this evil. Some offend because they crave popularity or want to do what their friends are doing. Some assert a right to do what is regarded by religion, law, and convention as wrongful. It was reported that some of the girls were either unconcerned or unashamed, and even proud, of what they had done. Some of the boys were insolent when questioned and maintained this attitude. The Committee has not overlooked the fact that ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.

... one must be a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... this country, and perfidiously left him to perish in an unknown land. But then the rich presents of gold and silver given him by Alcinous, which he saw carefully laid up in secure places near him, staggered him: which seemed not like the act of wrongful or unjust men, such as turn pirates for gain, or land helpless passengers in remote coasts to ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... the United States, while it claims to exercise, under and by virtue of the stipulations of treaty, the exclusive right of judging of the wrongful acts of its citizens resident in China, and of punishing them when found guilty according to its own laws, does not assume to claim or exercise any authority or control over the natives of China. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... it was not until 1906, on a bill filed nearly thirty years before, that Judge Hazel, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, found strongly in favor of the claimants and ordered an accounting. The court held that there had been a most wrongful appropriation of the patents, including alike those relating to the automatic, the duplex, and the quadruplex, all being included in the general arrangement under which Mr. Gould had held put his tempting bait of $4,000,000. In ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... to get justice to Ireland." This has held true ever since, and completely exemplifies all the intervening operations of Mr O'Connell. It has been his practice ever since "to connect every grievance with the subject of Repeal—to convert every wrongful act of any Government into an argument for the necessity of an Irish Legislature." Can it be wondered at that the present Government, thoroughly aware of the true state of the case—knowing their man—should regard the cry for Repeal simply ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... forefathers were prodigal. When he came into the title and estate some twenty years ago, he dismissed the whole retinue of servants, and, indeed, was defendant in several cases at law where retainers of our family brought suit against him for wrongful dismissal, or dismissal without a penny compensation in lieu of notice. I am pleased to say he lost all his cases, and when he pleaded poverty, got permission to sell a certain number of heirlooms, enabling him to make compensation, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... faulty party to read in his newspaper the next morning, "Died, yesterday, P. B., chaise-maker," etc. In a state of boiling indignation he rushed to the street, and on the way to the office of publication called the attention of various acquaintances to the wrongful statement, which, it appeared, no one had observed. Entering the office, he inquired, with much feeling, how Mr. Mycall could have published such a paragraph. "Did you not promise me," said the editor, "that my chaise should ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... the same would naturally run, the act was unlawful because of its consequences, and the subjecting of appellant's lands to such increased and different burden than would otherwise attach to it, was an invasion of appellant's rights from which the law implies damages, and in such case proof of the wrongful act entitles the plaintiff to ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... of twenty-three on bread and water!" cried Monsieur de Bonfons; "without any reason, too! Why, that constitutes wrongful cruelty; she can contest, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... itself, yet it is equally unquestionable that this process of negation is illogical. Many a true doctrine has been cradled in superstitions and absurdities. A faith supported by many classes of independent arguments is not overthrown by the disproof of one of those classes. It is as wrongful a procedure to deny the immortality of the soul because barbaric instinct grounded it on erroneous notions and enveloped it with falsehoods, as it would be to reject the established laws of gravitation and light and sound, for the reason that the various provisional theories, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the 'Virginia Slave' was removed. We returned to the statue, and stood near the American by whom it had been taken up, to give him an opportunity of making any remarks he chose upon the matter. Whatever were his feelings, his policy was to keep his lips closed. If he had felt that the act was wrongful, would he not have appealed to the sense of justice of the British bystanders, who are always ready to resist an insult offered to a foreigner in this country? If it was an insult, why not resent it, as became ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... Pierre Mille, who at the age of ninety-eight years had lost nothing of his intellectual and moral power, asked, the canon if he did not think that St. Orberosia would one day rise out of this wrongful oblivion. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... for Administration of Estates Adulteration of Food and Drugs Agency, Questions of Agreements, Disputed Affiliation Cases Animals, Cruelty to Arrest, Wrongful Assault ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... shallow, so conceitless, To be seduced by thy flattery, That hast deceived so many with thy vows? Return, return, and make thy love amends. 95 For me,—by this pale queen of night I swear, I am so far from granting thy request, That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit; And by and by intend to chide myself Even for this time I spend in talking to ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... culpable intent accompanies the criminal act." The same author, (1 Cr. Prac. Sec.521), repeated in other words, the same idea: "In order to render a party criminally responsible, a vicious will must concur with a wrongful act." ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... of performance takes place every day during the fair, but the story of the tragedy is always pretty much the same. There is a rightful heir, who loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a wrongful heir, who loves her too, and isn't beloved by her; and the wrongful heir gets hold of the rightful heir, and throws him into a dungeon, just to kill him off when convenient, for which purpose he hires a couple of assassins—a good one and a bad one—who, the moment ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... of thought and habit, that long years spent in love and meditation had procured for Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius. Some slight intellectual satisfaction there may be in the doing of evil; but none the less does each wrongful deed clip the wings of our thoughts, till at length they can only crawl amidst all that is fleeting and personal. To commit an act of injustice is to prove we have not yet attained the happiness within our grasp. And in ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... he, "if I could make my peace with the King; if he would allow me to sustain in arms that neither by act nor word have I loved you with a wrongful love, any knight from the Marshes of Ely right away to Dureaume that would gainsay me, would find me armed in the ring. Then if the King would keep you and drive me out I would cross to the Lowlands ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier

... I, walking in rapture around thee on that side and this, both with my hands and words, reap the varied pleasure, the delight of my former joys? O my son, thou hast left thy father's house deserted, sent away an exile by wrongful treatment from thy brother. How longed for by thy friends! how longed for by Thebes! From which time I am both shorn of my hoary locks, letting them fall with tears, with wailing;[21] deprived, my child, of the white robes, I receive in exchange around me these dark and dismal weeds. But the ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... others. But, when the consequences of the act are diffused over the whole community, or a large aggregate of persons, so that the effect on each individual is almost imperceptible, we are very apt to overlook the mischief resulting from it, and so not to recognise its wrongful character, while, at the same time, from lack of personal interest, others fail to call us to account. Hence it is that men, almost without any thought, and certainly often without any scruple, commit offences against the public or against corporations ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... supersede them and regulate all private rights between man and man. Civil rights such as are guaranteed by the Constitution against State aggression, thought Justice Bradley, cannot be impaired by the wrongful acts of individuals unsupported by State authority in the shape of laws, customs, or executive proceedings, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... tell him we will smash his head," that is conspiracy; and conspiracy may subject them to penalty of years in prison. It has been found in the experience of the English people to be such a dangerous power, this power of combination, that to use it for an unlawful or wrongful end may be more of an ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... Vaudeville—"Les Memoires du Diable." Admirably constructed, very interesting, and extremely well played. The plot is, that a certain M. Robin has come into possession of the papers of a deceased lawyer, and finds some relating to the wrongful withholding of an estate from a certain baroness, and to certain other frauds (involving even the denial of the marriage to the deceased baron, and the tarnishing of his good name) which are so very wicked ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... other man and the boy, the boat being by this time afloat, tugged at the oars. The attacking party followed, the captain making good misuse of the rifle, the odd man and the boy occasionally perverting an oar to wrongful but, at the crisis, effective purpose, while the wounded suffered the hate of him who earns personal as well as racial animosity. He sustained a cut on the head from a wooden sword, yet he fought on, retaining his wits, while a kind Providence, and his own artfulness and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... gates, the cries of babes new born, Whom fate had from their tender mothers torn, Assault his ears: then those, whom form of laws Condemn'd to die, when traitors judg'd their cause. Nor want they lots, nor judges to review The wrongful sentence, and award a new. Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears; And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears. Round in his urn the blended balls he rolls, Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... there any present here, Whom I can have a cause to fear?— Whom it were wrongful to perplex, Or faulty policy to vex? In what affrights the quiet mind My bitter thoughts employment find! In what torments a common grief Do I alone expect relief! Our aching sorrows to disclose, Our discontents, our wrongs repeat, To hurl defiance at our foes, And let the soul respire, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy; and as lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance (says he), suppose a good citizen, who had seen his Majesty take refuge there, had been asked, "Is King Charles up that oak-tree?" his duty would have been not to say, Yes—so that the Cromwellians should seize the king and murder him like his father—but No; his Majesty ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... of the Truth may not know nor understand; but through their old and new unshamefast sins, those tyrants and enemies of Soothfastness shall be so blinded and obstinate in evil, that they shall ween themselves to do pleasant sacrifices unto the LORD GOD in their malicious and wrongful pursuing and destroying of innocent men's and women's bodies; which men and women for their very virtuous living and for their true knowledging of the Truth and their patient, wilful, and glad suffering of persecution for righteousness, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... He appeared at a Folkmote, which was being held at Paul's Cross, and, before taking leave, he announced that in future the citizens should be allowed to plead their own cases (without employing legal aid) in all the courts of the city, excepting in pleas of the crown, pleas of land, and of wrongful distress. On the same day John Mansel who had been one of the king's justiciars in 1257, when the city was "taken into the king's hand," and Fitz-Thedmar had been indicted and deprived of his aldermanry for upholding the privileges of the citizens(234)—publicly ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... for such deeds are the worst that have ever been done; nor do I know what can have driven you to come hither to me, and to think that I should be easier to undertake your suit than Gudmund, or that I would back a wrongful quarrel." ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... missioner—where the faithful are exhorted to exercise their charity to such a degree that it may be said that the rich and the poor have all things in common; third, passages directed against avarice and the wrongful acquisition or abuse of riches; and fourth, passages where the distinction between the natural and positive law on the ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... bad things are done. It is my own belief that the material in the German Army (which is the best fighting machine that the world has ever seen) will compare favorably with that of any army in the world, and that the percentage of wrongful acts on the part of the German soldiers has been small. Such misdeeds, sometimes to be characterized as atrocities, are the inevitable result of war, and they bring a grave responsibility upon a Government which (to accept as well founded the frank utterances of the leaders of opinion ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... cost His righteousness and truth and honour. Could that be? In no wise. Then it must be at the cost of His own bearing the penalty due unto the sinner. Thy sins, Amphillis, thine every failure in duty, thine every foolish thought or wrongful word, cost the Father His own Son out of His bosom, cost the Son a human life of agony and a death of uttermost terribleness. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... of the sovereign to the investiture of ecclesiastical benefices was ancient and undisputed. What Edward had freely done, William went on freely doing, and Hildebrand himself never ventured on a word of remonstrance against a power which he deemed so wrongful in the hands of his own sovereign. William had but to stand on the rights of his predecessors. When Gregory asked for homage for the crown which he had in some sort given, William answered indeed as an English king. What the kings before him had done for or paid to the Roman see, that would he do ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... not the charm of womanhood, unless she attempts to improve it by some monstrous contrivance of her own; no times when good taste and womanly tact cannot so drape it that it will possess some attraction peculiar to her sex. And were it not so, how irrational, how wrongful is it to extinguish, I will not say the beauty, but, in part, the very humanity of all women, at all times, for the sake of hiding for some women the sign of their perfected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... only stand unshaken through trials and discomfiture, but it will draw strength from the very setbacks which it may suffer. A wrongful cause can only stand as long as it is buoyed up ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... Roman church stands firmly upon the proposition that "directly intended, artificial abortion must be regarded as wrongful killing, as murder." [Footnote: Pastoral Medicine] But it required a long time for it to reach that point, in the face of the demand for ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... attack he made when, ostensibly, he was mentally irresponsible. I shall require that he be put on record as fully understanding and appreciating his own personal responsibility for my safety—so that should he still hold any wrongful designs, and afterwards succeed in carrying them out, he or his attorneys will be debarred from again pleading ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James



Words linked to "Wrongful" :   illegitimate, wrongfulness, unjust



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